A school which burnt to the ground seven months ago, forcing its pupils to attend lessons in portakabins, was one of hundreds that heard this week that the government had called a halt to its rebuilding plans.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, announced on Monday that the government had suspended new building projects for 715 schools in England and cancelled the £55bn Building Schools for the Future programme, saying it had been beset by "massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy".

Campsmount Technology College in Doncaster was devastated to discover its rebuilding plans would not be going ahead.

An electrical fault in December sparked a blaze which gutted all but the gym, the library and one block of classrooms. Pupils' work was lost as classrooms and halls were razed to the ground. It took 60 firefighters to battle the 100ft flames and vast black smoke plume thatengulfed the site.

Since then, Campsmount's 800 pupils and 150 staff have tramped from one temporary classroom to another, getting soaked when it rains or snows.

The cost of the portakabins and temporary assembly halls come to £25,000 a week, paid for by the school's insurers.

"It is not so much Building Schools for the Future, as Building Schools for Right Now," said Andy Sprakes, the headteacher. "We lost virtually all of our school. We can't go on operating out of temporary classrooms. As learning spaces, they are fine, but they are not ideal."

He added: "It just needs sorting out. I don't think any government in their right mind would leave a school like ours without a building."

Campsmount was due to be rebuilt through BSF by 2015, but the completion date was brought forward following the fire.

Sprakes says he needs approximately £17m to rebuild the school. He is confident that he can secure £5m or £6m from the government towards the rebuilding of the school, which he will add to an unamed sum due from insurers. Now the school has fallen off the BSF list he is unsure which government spending pot the money will come from.

A spokesman from the Department for Education said there was about £5bn for school capital projects each year, not including BSF money. "The idea that the government would leave a school languishing is incorrect," he said. "We will be looking carefully at cases of schools like this."

However, Ed Balls, Labour's shadow education secretary, said Campsmount's predicament was proof of how "unfair and arbitrary" the government's list of cancelled BSF projects was.

He said: "It's particularly tragic and unfair that schools which have been so badly damaged by fire, and which we had prioritised up the queue, have seen their new buildings cancelled."